At Ivanka’s Company, There Were Women Who Worked … Without Maternity Leave
Ivanka Trump has created a lifestyle brand — and now a book — premised on women’s empowerment. But her company did not have a maternity leave policy until her female workers pushed her to adopt one.
When Trump’s “Women Who Work” initiative launched in 2013, “They [had] no maternity policy in place, they [didn’t] have health benefits in place,” Rachel Abrams, the co-author of a New York Times profile of Trump, told the paper’s podcast, The Daily.
“We’re not finding a lot of instances where’s she expressing a strong feminist belief system… The employees say they really had to push her understand these issues,” she added.
Eventually, Women Who Work did enact policies allowing for maternity, paternity and adoption leave. But Abrams seems to believe that Trump’s commitment to women’s empowerment came after, and not before, it proved to be lucrative.
Women Who Work “is a pure marketing campaign, this is a way for her to sell her shoes and handbags and it’s being developed by the team around her,” Abrams said.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30